By ADAM GIFFORD
The ANZ Bank has turned to relative newcomer NetIQ to help manage applications on its network of computers in branches throughout New Zealand and Australia.
Project manager Mick Lathman says that in the next year the ANZ will standardise on the Windows 2000 operating system at branch
level, replacing earlier versions of Microsoft Windows NT, Novell Netware and IBM OS/2.
NetIQ's AppManager will provide event alerting and data collection for critical applications as well as manage the performance and availability of Windows 2000.
The bank hopes the shift to Microsoft's latest business operating system will allow it to offer more online services and better customer service, in which consumer monitors say the bank lags.
NetIQ regional director Jeff Hyde said it was one of the biggest implementations in the region: AppManager runs on more than 1300 servers in branches and data centres to detect and fix system problems.
"ANZ has been trying to implement TNG Unicentre for four years, but couldn't make it work on Intel. We deployed in AppManager in six weeks," Mr Hyde said.
TNG Unicentre is a competing network management tool from Computer Associates, which is mainly used in large data centres and mainframe situations.
Mr Hyde said that as well as TNG, NetIQ was winning business from sites using management software by IBM subsidiary Tivoli.
Mr Latham was unwilling to describe the project as a TNG replacement. He said TNG was still used to manage Unix servers in ANZ's data centres.
"We still have a good relationship with CA," Mr Latham said.
He said ANZ expected the NetIQ software to quickly pay for itself by reducing system downtime and increasing performance and availability of servers and applications.
NetIQ was rated 12th on Bloomberg's list of the 100 fastest growing technology companies for fiscal 2001 with revenues of $US166.9 million ($393.2 million), up 248 per cent on the previous year.
Mr Hyde said NetIQ's per server per module pricing structure allowed it to put the heat on incumbents such as CA and Tivoli.
Unlike its competitors, the price did not depend on the size of processor used. He said for a network running a common application such as Microsoft Exchange, AppManager would cost between $1000 and $2000 a server.
